Vineyard & Winery

Brrrrrrr! Is it me or does it feel colder than last year? Winter tends to be viewed as the time when the vines receive a ‘haircut’ before the next growing season. While that is true, the effects of colder temperatures on the overall health of the vineyard also merit consideration.

February is often seen as the month of love and I personally believe there is nothing more romantic than wine. This month we’re bottling our 2019 reds! The concept of blending is an examination of individual components and what they can bring to the glass when “married” with another wine. (See what I did there? I thought it was clever.) There was careful blending done to ensure we are bringing you the best wines possible.

January marks the beginning of the new growing season. The crew has already begun to start pruning and working their way through the vineyard. Each vine is looked at separately and assessed for disease pressure, health, and the number of buds. Pruning is not just for the upcoming growing season, but it is also an investment in future vintages.

The new year starts not with a bang, but with a bottling of the new vintage. Our first bottling of the year will be on January 5th and includes an awesome lineup of everyone’s favorites, Sarah’s Patio White and Sarah's Patio Red, along with Mariposa and one of my favorites, the always racy Albariño Verde. I think we really captured that traditional “Vinho Verde” style with this vintage.

Well, harvest is over. All the green leaves have fallen to the ground and the vineyard enters into its yearly slumber before another growing season. As dormancy takes hold of the vineyard, Freddi and I have already begun talking about the focus for the next growing season. We want to take as many elements of the vineyard into account as we possibly can, even down to the very ground that our vines grow in.

There is a sigh of relief that has filled the winery as the last of the Norton is barreled down. This marks the official end to harvest, and everyone has begun to relax. While the harvest crew works diligently to clean the winery post-harvest, Jenni and I have begun to discuss the next bottling in January. I now have two harvests under my belt here at Chrysalis and while I feel a huge sense of accomplishment, I want to give a very heartfelt and special thanks to our 2020 harvest crew. This year we were fortunate to find two incredibly passionate people to assist with harvest.

I don’t think any harvest proves to be uneventful or routine. I discussed last month the effects of hail damage and how a few varietals were harvested a bit earlier. This month it’s been a war of attrition. The hurricanes pushed a little more rain our way than we expected. This combined with cooler temperatures has slowed the ripening of our red varietals.

This harvest has been a strange one to say the least. While the whites arrived mostly on time, the reds experienced an unexpected delay. Thanks to hurricanes and unusual cold weather! The Tannat, Petit Verdot, Tinta Cao, and Nebbiolo have been crushed and reside in our open fermenters or “T-bins”.

I’m not sure who said that “the forces of nature are unpredictable,” but they were spot on. Just after a long day of walking the vineyard and admiring all the beautiful fruit, a hail storm attacked. For a solid 15 minutes or more, hail the size of large marbles sliced through all of Freddi’s hard work. It was incredibly heartbreaking to see beautiful clusters of Petit Manseng, Albariño, and Viognier shattered.

It’s surely Harvest time here at Chrysalis and the workload has been nonstop. Starting at the first of last month, we pulled in around 5.5 tons of Albariño for our Albariño Verde wine. The fermentation went smoothly and the wine really personifies that Vinho Verde style. The rest of the Albariño followed just a couple of weeks later and proved to be just as delicious.